


Connie Swap Episode 29: The New Lars

by br42, BurdenKing, MjStudioArts



Series: Connie Swap [29]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anxiety, Art, Deaf, Deaf Character, Drama, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Momswap, Pictures, Romance, Slice of Life, Steven Universe AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-20 01:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42, https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurdenKing/pseuds/BurdenKing, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MjStudioArts/pseuds/MjStudioArts
Summary: Lars is a jerk. A big one, and despite Connie's efforts to understand him he remains inscrutable in his jerkitude. But what if... What if he didn't have to be?





	1. Eye Puzzles

Lapis and Peridot were inside. This was a problem.

Connie stood, no, _lurked_ outside the front door to the Beach House, unsure what to do. She'd been waiting for probably fifteen minutes for the pair to wander off into the temple or into town, but no, they were busy in the living room and gave no indication that was going to change.

Connie looked down at the replacement power sink she'd been wearing the last couple of days. Peridot had had a spare in her room and she'd made a point of swiping it after the gem emerged almost a week ago, her room no longer locked. Sure enough, the device was shifting from green to blue to yellow to orange and back with a speed to match the knot of apprehension in Connie’s chest.

Head down she also noticed the twinkling of her gemstone. Connie stared at the familiar facets for a moment before closing her eyes. _Why won't anyone listen to me?! Why is everyone else. So. Wrong?!_ For a moment she could taste the grit of sand on her tongue.

Gem glowing, she opened her eyes and stared at the sword in her grip. Shining, flawless, powerful. She could do this. She could face them. She could win.

"Oh, hello Co-" started Peridot, standing in the doorway.

"Eep!" cried Connie, startled.

"Gah!" added Peridot, the gem staggering back a step when she saw the sword.

The two eyed one another uncertainly, each feeling a mix of shame and frustration, neither able to form a proper response. 

A blue face appeared over Peridot's shoulder, took in the whole scene at a glance, then very deliberately squeezed past and stood in front of Peridot, as if acting as a physical buffer between guardian and ward. "Con-con!" she cried.

Connie blinked, thrown further off balance.

"Howdy stranger. Bring it in here for a hug." Lapis opened her arms wide in invitation.

A little hesitantly, Connie stepped forward to complete the embrace then she realized she was still holding her sword. No, sword-hugs were dangerous; electrified sword-hugs, even moreso. After a moment's pause she let go of the weapon, allowing it to dissolve into motes of light, then went in for the hug. "Hi Lapis."

"Hey Connie. Come in, come in!" said the gem, swiveling around and using the hand at Connie's back to propel her forward. "Dot and I have been morping; you've gotta check it out!"

The awkwardness at the doorway was bulled through and forgotten by Lapis' literal pushiness.

Connie made her way through a living room littered with debris: old clothes, wrappers, bits of scrap, and other things that probably fell under the very wide definition of 'art supplies' used by the two meep morpers. There were little paths through the clutter where the robonoids had passed, diminutive game trails to help the bots get around. Even Wolf's napping form on the couch had a dusting of debris.

Stepping around a basketball-sized tangle of pipe cleaners and extension cords, Connie saw Wally sitting in the middle of a pile of sour candy wrappers, prodding lethargically at the collection.

"Is Wally making some kind of morp too?" asked the girl, confused. The Wally she was familiar with would be attacking the sea of debris with boundless, even joyful determination.

Lapis slowed long enough to look down at the robonoid. "Huh? Oh, naw, Wally's just been a real lazy bones." Bending over at the waist to peer at the bot, she told it, "Hop to it, Tinkertoy."

Peridot, following behind them, said in a didactic tone, "Wally's behavioral matrix is still in flux following my tweak to it a month prior. Connie complained of Wally being too zealous during a training exercise in early August so I lowered the intensity of the cleaning directive." A pair of floating fingers wafted down to caress the robonoid. "I could intervene, make manual adjustments to hurry things along..." she said in a somewhat softer voice.

Then the floating fingers snapped back to Peridot's primary limb enhancer and she took Connie's arm, joining Lapis in leading the girl forward. "But that would consume time we don't have. A little lethargy can be tolerated."

The group advanced past the coffee table and over to a quartet of... art? Maybe? Connie looked at the collection skeptically.

"The first item for your consideration," said Peridot as she propelled Connie over to an easel holding up a painting, "is a joint effort by Lazuli and myself. It is a water painting-"

"Literally!" chirped Lapis.

"-in the style of Hokusai's masterpiece _The Great Wave off Kanagawa_ that I have entitled _Enjoying the Ride."_

As stated, it looked remarkably like the famous Japanese wave painting. However, instead of Mount Fuji in the background, there was the temple statue, four eyes staring out at them with a lighthouse situated on the hill above. Though why the lighthouse was crumbling, with a thin trickle of smoke coming out the top was unclear. In the wave's path was what looked like a stylized depiction of Beach City. And there, high-fiving while surfing the wave, were Peridot and Lapis, riding on color-coordinated surfboards.

"I got the water of the bay to model for us," boasted Lapis. "Also, the high five was my idea."

It was a very well-done painting but there was something unsettling about it.

However, before Connie could find a way to put her feelings to words, she was swept along to the next in line. It was a wheel made up of a tangled mish-mash of materials, like a spider web if the spider had raided a craft store then an industrial supply shop. At even points along the wheel were pictures of the campers from _Camp Pining Hearts_.

"This is a depiction of the relationships between the characters of CPH, with the strength and quality of the materials used representing the strength and quality of the connection." Peridot rocked on her gravity connectors and looked at Connie expectantly.

 _Another shipping chart,_ thought Connie. She'd seen more than a few over the years: back when she'd been five or six, making them out of craft supplies had been something of a staple activity between her and Peridot.

"Is- Is that a steel rod between Pierre and Percy?" Connie asked, squinting at the material nestled between the other connections made of things like twine, aluminum, or, in the case of Paulette and Percy, rotten driftwood.

"Hardly," scoffed Peridot while Lapis winged over to fuss with something under a canvas farther down the line. "That's the same material your shield is fashioned from, and of a high degree of purity at that. Orders of magnitude more durable than mere steel."

Connie blinked. "I thought that stuff was hard to find. Bismuth said even with her forge the high-quality material was slow to make."

Peridot waved her off. "Yes, well, there's much less need to preserve our stocks since-"

The gem's sentence was cut off with a chime and a brilliant light from the warp pad. When the glow faded, Jasper was left on the pad, surveying the room.

"Greetings Jasper." // "Hey OJ." // "Hi Jasper." // "BARK!" came the reply from the room, Wolf having raised a sleepy head, tail wagging to greet his frequent patrol/walkies partner.

The Quartz offered a small nod in response.

With that, Lapis whipped the canvas off the item she'd been literally hovering beside. "Hey Con-Con, OJ, check this out! Got it from the printers yesterday." Revealed was a professional-looking poster showing a rainbow-hued blur of lines and dots, like a snow storm as interpreted by Lisa Frank.

"Is that a Magic Eye picture?" asked Connie, wading over to get a better look at it.

Jasper strode closer, peering at the image. A few seconds passed and then the gem smiled. "A shark. Those are fun." Turning to Connie she said, "A couple decades back, one tried to jump into our boat while we were posing for a picture." She flexed. “Sent it back.”

Lapis chuckled. "Yeah, ol' Jaws got taken down a peg that day."

After blinking, crossing her eyes, and moving her head back and forth a little, Connie finally saw the cartoony shark. It had a head full of dreadlocks and a dopey expression on its face. "Where'd you get this?" she asked, turning to Lapis and struggling for a moment to get her eyes to refocus.

"Eh, there's this company a couple states over that'll make you one custom if you send them a picture," explained Lapis. "They _prefer_ it if you email the image as an attachment, but I find spraying their office with jets of water while shouting and waving a drawing around gets you faster service," boasted the blue gem, clearly pleased with herself.

Peridot, who had been silently glaring at the picture for several seconds, made a frustrated growl. "Grah! I find autostereograms to be such a vexing visual medium!"

"Wait, huh?" said Connie, surprised. "What's the problem?"

"The problem is that my visor automatically focuses and thus I am unable to perform the necessary ocular deception of 'looking through the image' to see the cartilaginous fish in question." Peridot paced a little, scowling at the picture.

Connie blinked. "Why don't you just take off your visor, ma'am?"

"Take off my what?" asked Peridot, looking at her perplexed.

"Take off your visor," echoed Jasper.

"Do what to my visor?"

"Take off your visor!" replied Connie and Jasper in unison.

"What my what now?" answered Peridot, head tilted and doing a very good bewildered-owl impression.

Jasper's gaze lingered on Peridot for a second before turning to Connie.

Connie shrugged and said, "I honestly can't tell if she's being serious or not."

Lapis, deadpan, said, "Oh, believe it. The visor stays on. Always."

Jasper looked curious. "Even when she-"

"Yup. Even then," said Lapis authoritatively.

It was rare when Jasper showed naked surprise, and this was one such time.

Mentally shrugging and trying to move things along, Connie pointed at the last art installment: a large, hydraulic press that dominated one corner of the room. "What about that one?"

She missed Lapis waving and making a little slicing motion at neck height where Peridot couldn't see it.

Wolf, meanwhile, had escaped the couch and padded over, offering Jasper a friendly nudge before wheedling ear scratches out of Connie.

Still giving the hound his ear scratches, Connie looked closer and saw that the press was painted bands of white, blue, and yellow and beneath it stood a quartet of soda cans: lime, orange, blue-raspberry, and rainbow punch. The press was veeery slowly lowering, maybe only millimeters an hour, but the cans were already starting to deform from being inexorably crushed.

"That was something I conceived of during my sequestration in my workshop. I think the visual metaphor speaks for itself," said Peridot, limb enhancers crossing.

Unnoticed by either, Lapis' face found its way to her palm.

Connie gave the ‘art’ another look and then rounded on Peridot, arms akimbo. "We don't know what's going to happen, and besides, right is right. They didn't deserve to be trapped on Earth."

"Right and wrong as absolutes completely overlook the consequences that follow!" cried Peridot in rebuke. "If there is even a one percent chance of annihilation and planetary scouring then-"

Connie's voice rose as she responded over the top of Peridot. "But if we'd done what was right instead of what was easy, or familiar, when we first encountered Amethyst, or if we'd actually _checked_ with the Pearl in my book, then they might not have wanted to-"

There was a rattle above and then the sprinklers overhead began to spray fire-suppression foam. Water-based fire-suppression foam. After a second or two of bubbly interruption, the spray ended and Lapis winged over.

"Hey, would you look at that? The ol' sprinkler system must be acting up. Good thing the sprinklers over the painting and my awesome poster didn't leak," observed Lapis. "Connie, why don't you run along while I help Dot deal with this completely unexpected malfunction?"

Connie's eyes narrowed and her hand flexed as if reaching for a sword she was no longer holding. Then Wolf nuzzled her palm, large head nudging the girl a step back. Connie relented. "Yeah. I was only here to get my backpack and Wolf anyway," she said sharply. "Come on Wolf."

Wolf looked between Connie and Jasper for a moment.

"No patrol today," said the Quartz. "Just here to get a few things for Bismuth. The Forge needs rebuilding."

With that Wolf shook free the foam that had accumulated on him, then padded after Connie, the girl having grabbed her pack and was already disappearing out the door. Power sink dangling from her hand, the foam was slowly dissolving and steaming off as faint crackles of electricity arced across it.

* * *

"-disco ball and laser lights and they even had glowing drinks! It was the coolest party-club-place ever!" exclaimed Steven.

Jeff weaved a little to evade Steven's expansive gesture as he spoke. A little behind them was Peedee, the blonde content to stand on the periphery of Steven's aura of enthusiasm as they made their way out the front doors of the school.

"It sounds really cool," agreed Jeff. He stumbled a little on an untied shoelace, the things just never stayed tied for him, then he asked, "Hey, are you guys free to come over tonight?"

"I've got a thing with your mom first," answered Peedee. The boy waited just long enough that Jeff was about to make some kind of retort when he said, "I know that sounds like an dig, but I actually do: Dr. Brooks rescheduled the therapy session for today, but I can come over afterwards."

"Oh right, I forgot that was today," agreed Jeff, though he still gave Peedee a shove.

Peedee smirked.

"That'd be a lot of fun, Jeff," enthused Steven, because _Steven_. "I'll see if-"

"Actually," interrupted Peedee, "I'm pretty sure Steven's busy."

"What? I am?" asked the big-haired teen, looking at the blonde.

Peedee reached out and nudged Steven's chin forward so that he saw what quite a few other students were staring at: a brown-skinned girl waving at them from atop a giant yellow wolf.

"Wha- Connie!" Steven started to run, then paused long enough to shout over his shoulder, "Bye Jeff! Bye Peedee! I'll call you guys later!"

After climbing up and getting situated behind Connie, there was a howl and then boy, girl, and hound all vanished into a swirling portal.

The crowd of parents and students were still for a moment before going back to what they were doing. It was Beach City's school, after all.

Jeff and Peedee made a line for the bus, the former saying, "You know, anywhere else, doing that would probably make you the most popular kid in school. You'd probably get your own fan club and everything."

"But here it's just, 'Oh yeah, that's Steven's new ride,'" said Peedee, finishing his friend's thought.

Jeff nodded, still a little abstracted. As he climbed the steps into the bus he said, "I'd rather take a magical wolf home than the bus."

Peedee followed after, sitting down in the seat across from Jeff. There were plenty of seats open because, Beach City. "Naw, given the number of snack breaks Wolf takes when he's being our mascot, it probably smells like fry farts."

Jeff struggled to get the stubborn window beside his seat to go down. Breathing through his mouth, he said, "Yeah but so does the bus."

Peedee sniffed, once, twice, then wrinkled his nose up. "Yeah, fair point." He stood to try and coax his own window down as well.

* * *

First, they went to that deli in Empire. No one in Beach City did a Reuben or pastrami on rye half so well. These weren't eaten, though. Well, some were because Wolf's puppy dog eyes were powerful, but the rest went into the insulated basket.

Next, they went to a strip mall on the outskirts of Charm City which had the _best_ smoothies. Back when Steven had been living in Wilmingmore, whenever father and son had gone to Empire City they'd stop there for a mid-trip treat. These went into an ice chest loaded with ice packs from Doug's freezer.

Then they went to the really big game store in Crossroads. Reaching into Wolf's pocket dimension, Connie drew out a length of sausage links as well as a large bowl of water. These were placed for Wolf out front of the shop while Connie and Steven went inside to marvel at shelf after shelf of board games, action figures, miniatures, and dice.

Despite distractions they were eventually able to zero in on their prize: the final expansion of _Sentinels of the Multiverse_ , complete with the giant, many-shelved collector's edition case that would enable Steven to consolidate his sprawling _Sentinels_ collection into a single container.

Muscling the huge box onto the counter, Steven and Connie smiled up at the owner and said in unison, "We'll take it!"

Wolf was less enthusiastic about having the unwieldy container passed through into his pocket dimension... until Connie and Steven explained that dinner was next on the agenda.

Sitting on a very pretty bluff, far away from any city and overlooking a stretch of the Delmarva coastline, Connie and Steven sat in folding chairs brought out of Wolf's neck-slash-dimensional opening, eating still-warm deli sandwiches and drinking ice-cold smoothies while Wolf noshed happily on kibble and pastrami. When the angle of the sun and the glare off the ocean got to be too much for Connie's force field to keep at bay, Connie disappeared up to her torso in Wolf's neck fur before emerging with a pair of sunglasses.

Both of them were petting Wolf's flank, soaking in the view.

"Wolf's the best dog ever," observed Steven.

Connie silently nodded her agreement. Wolf not-so-silently barked his approval.

When the sun was finally starting to go down Connie turned to Steven and raised an eyebrow in silent question. Steven thought for a second and then said, "Jeff was wanting to do some gaming and I'm pretty sure he hasn’t played the latest _Sentinels_ expansion."

Offering the last of the deli treats to Wolf, the pair packed away their stuff and prepared to return to Beach City. In style.

* * *

Through the morning light, Connie trudged across the pavement and pulled the door to the Big Donut open, the bell giving a light ‘ding-a-ling’ to announce her. Lars paused from leaning on the display case to give Connie a scowl. “Whaddya want?" he asked, looking like he was sucking on a lemon.

Defeating OblivAeon and saving the Multiverse had kept the Sentinels busy late into the night. Jeff, Peedee, and Steven were in class and Connie was looking for places to loiter. Dad was busy at home and father and daughter still hadn't quite gotten used to sharing a space with one another; when Connie made her semi-regular trips into Beach City, no one complained. The Beach House was right out, Wolf was off doing Wolf things, and the library didn't have donuts.

Connie's gaze lingered on Lars for a few seconds. "Is Sadie-"

"Dragged off to some thing with her crazy mom," snapped Lars.

Connie had a movie night scheduled with the blonde, which had originally been a movie morning and then afternoon. Now she knew why things had been bumped. Connie rubbed the corner of her eye and yawned, nodding.

Lars yawned in response and then shot her a look, as if she'd done that on purpose.

Connie walked over and dropped her backpack off at a table, opening it up and pulling a novel out. Over her one hearing aid she could hear bland Muzak from the shop's speakers.

"Hey, you're not staying here, are you?" Lars' default abrasiveness had a dash of worry to it.

Connie resisted the urge to roll her bleary eyes. "I'm going to buy some donuts and read for a little while." Connie zipped the pack shut and gave the clerk a level stare. "You know, like a customer."

Lars shook his head. "Oh heck no." He reached under the counter and grabbed a donut at random, thrusting it forward. "Go read on a park bench or something."

Connie's eyebrow twitched and she felt her jaw clench. "Lars." She said the word in one long, drawn-out syllable, her voice both pleading and frustrated. "I just want some donuts and peace. I'll be quiet. You can ignore me and I’ll ignore you."

 _Why are you such a jerk? And why this kind of jerk? That Kevin guy was a narcissistic creep: straightforward and simple. But I just don't get what makes you act like this._ Connie shook her head and consoled herself with the memory of Kevin getting clocked.

Lars gave her a gimlet-eyed stare then huffed dramatically. "Fine. But I'm going to start hitting you with a broom if it looks like some shadow thing is going to crawl out of your chest rock."

Before Connie could object, or say that it had been way too long since she'd visited the Nightmare Monster for that to be a risk, Lars cut in, saying, "Whaddya want? And hurry, I got stuff to do."

_I doubt that._

Connie shook her head, placed her order (which was sullenly filled), payed, and trudged back to her seat. She ate her donut scornfully, radiating vexation. If she’d had the negative energy for it, she’d probably have summoned a shadow trickster on the spot.

Fortunately, Lars skulked off to the back of the shop which helped thin out the angst miasma.

After reading a chapter and polishing off the rest of her food, Connie found herself drooping. Pushing her book back a little, she could see the outline of her shoes through the mottled and embossed glass of the table. She kicked her feet idly, seeing the coral-colored shapes beneath moving like fish swimming beneath thick ice. It put her in the mind of Lapis' Magic Eye poster. Or... or maybe a dream she'd had?

She blinked sleepily, trying to call to mind the swirls and patterns she'd sometimes seen just before waking. Connie's head drifted down to the crook of her elbow, arm draped across the table as a pillow. Like Alice chasing the White Rabbit down his burrow, Connie closed her eyes, pursuing the memory of her dreams, colors and patterns visible in the dim light behind her eyelids.

* * *

It got quiet. Super quiet. Quieter-than-being-deaf quiet. For a brief moment Connie felt like she was falling but the landing was soft, a mere suggestion of impact.

There were colors and patterns; she'd caught up with those but they were blurry. Old instincts kicked in and Connie patted herself looking for her glasses. Then there was a yellow glow, the image _clicked_ into focus, and she could see the shark.

Part of her reeled. It was an incredible, impossible vista she was hovering over. Colors, patterns, shifting and gliding but remaining consistent in a surreal landscape that stretched as far as Connie could see.

But part of her, part of her _understood_. That long stretch of zigzagging yellow? Boredom. That knot of green there was entertainment, but tinged with nostalgia. The deep pink region was hope, the expectation of everything working out. It made her think of Steven. Though in the grand view of... whatever this was, hope was definitely the minority.

No, the majority was impossible to miss, an enormous black tendril of self-consciousness. _Wow, that thing touches almost everything._ She could see, no, she could _understand_ how it was the dominate structure of this vast, amazing panoply. Whether it was the trunk of a tree, without which the whole thing would collapse, or ink that had been spilled and was oozing over everything in its path, she wasn't sure.

Connie looked down and saw herself, a ghost, weightless, see-through, floating over a kaleidoscopic landscape that was a riot of color yet completely, utterly silent. With an act of will she found herself drifting back, farther and farther up so that she could take in the whole of this _captivating_ vista.

And there, gazing over the whole of this grand, complex-yet-elegant spectacle, Connie came to one clear realization.

_Whoever this is must be a real jerk._

How could they not be? Almost everything would make them feel insecure. Every action would be filtered through the lens of uncertainty, and uncertainty would make them lash out or retreat. Seen from this view, it was clear as day, inescapable.

Connie even felt a little bad for them. Sympathy was understanding another person's position, after all, and this was something she couldn't not see. Literally; her eyelids were transparent.

This was a really weird dream.

_But what if..._

She floated down, closer and closer to the main source of self-consciousness. What if there was less of that? That'd make them better, right?

She reached out. Her left hand could pass through her right but the substance of this tapestry was solid beneath her fingertips. She tried to pull. It budged, but it was like pushing on the bumper of a parked car: it shifted slightly but didn't really move.

She floated back so that the tapestry seemed smaller relative to her and she grasped each end of the black river that was choking the multi-colored landscape. She pulled again. Slowly, oh-so-slowly it moved, but it was a glacier inching across the landscape.

Plus, this was making her oddly tired.

Okay, the source of the self-consciousness wasn't going anywhere, but what if she moved a little downstream and dammed it? Narrowed the opening so that all the little inlets and fjords received less? Maybe more of the greens and reds and yellows would emerge if she did that.

Probably eighty percent of the black river's reach was flowing through this narrow channel here, sandwiched between banks of green. She grasped the sides and found it much more pliant, like modeling clay. After a couple of minutes effort she was able to pinch the channel closed to the point that only a tiny trickle of black was making it through.

Immediately the whole pattern began to shift and rearrange, a thousand thousand dominoes falling in a fantastic and bewilderingly complex fashion, orderly but beyond her comprehension. Still, it was extremely fascinating to watch.

Panning back, Connie looked at this new pattern. She still didn't have a clear understanding of what it all meant as it fluctuated into some new equilibrium, but she couldn't help but think it'd be an improvement.

Satisfied, Connie smiled to herself. She tried to brush her hands in a 'job well done' gesture, but her fingers went right through each other.

Hmm. How to get out of this dream? Or at least transition to something that was differently weird?

There was a faint yellow glow, something so constant she'd overlooked it, noticing it only now that it was diminishing. With that the grand vista became a fuzzy and indecipherable sprawl of color, the shark no longer visible among the rainbow patterns.

Sound returned in a rush, thumping, whooshing, thrumming, the sounds of a body, deafening following their absence. In one ear she could hear the bland Muzak of the Big Donut. And she could feel... cold? Hard? Why did it smell like shoes and old pastries in her dream?

Something was poking her.

"Hey. Hey weirdo. Wake up."

Connie opened her eyes and found herself staring at the underside of the table, the crumbs Lars had been too lazy to sweep up inches from her face. In the blurry distance were shoes and skinny jeans. A long, red broom handle was moving, prodding her shoulder.

Connie groaned and swatted the broom handle aside. "Ugh, I'm up." Poke. "I said I was up!"

She saw Lars' face appear down below the edge of the table. "Are you okay?"

Was she? "Uh, yeah. I'm not sure why I'm down here, though."

Lars' face vanished above the horizon of the table, though it was a peach-and-carrot-colored blur visible through the mottled glass. "Me neither. Anyway, can you leave?" There was a pause. "Please?"

Blearily Connie rose to her feet, being mindful not to bang her head on the way up. She brushed crumbs from the side of her face and blinked her eyes as she reoriented on Lars. "Huh?"

Lars gestured towards the door with the broom handle. "I'm leaving early. I'm going to go see what Buck and Jenny are doing. I need you to go before I can lock up."

Still thrown by the weird dreams and even weirder waking position, Connie nodded uncertainly, too shaken to object. "Uh, yeah. Just let me grab my things."

Packing her stuff up and shouldering her pack, Connie left the Big Donut a little bewildered. She heard the click of the lock behind her.

 _At least he said 'please,'_ she observed to herself, heading in the direction of her dad's apartment so she could wash the rest of the Big Donut off of her.

* * *

"What do you think?" asked Connie as she and Steven strolled down Waterman Street, the amusement park Connie was banned from visible in the distance.

They'd been walking along the boardwalk earlier but then Lapis had gone soaring past pulling a ski rope. Hanging onto the other end was Peridot, the green gem riding a hovering skateboard. Not a hoverboard; a literal skateboard that was being levitated by some kind of gemtech.

Connie had insisted they relocate across town after that.

"I think miss Peridot should take off her visor so she can see the shark," answered Steven.

"No, about the weird dream."

"Oh, that." He scratched an ear and thought for a second. "I don't know. Did it feel... magical? A dream of destiny?" he asked.

"Yeah." Connie became steadily less certain as she walked. "Maybe," she amended. The two of them had made more than a few wrong predictions in the hunt to figure out her powers, entire pages of the power diary having been scratched out after the fact. They'd since learned to be more careful. "I don't know."

Before Steven could respond, Connie’s phone rang out, the girl fishing it out and holding it up to her ear. "Hello?"

"Hi Connie," said Sadie, the blonde sounding excited and a little breathless.

"Oh, hey Sadie." When Steven smiled and signed a greeting, Connie added, "Steven says hello too."

The phone chuckled. "Hi Steven. Anyway, I wanted to call to see if you'd be okay rescheduling the movie night for some other day?"

Connie blinked. "Oh, uh, sure." She grimaced. "Is your mom-"

"No!" cried an overjoyed Sadie so loudly Connie had to hold the phone away from her good ear. "No," she repeated less exuberantly. "I went over to talk with Buck about the movie night and Lars was there. And he asked if we could get together, just me and him, to, like, eat dinner and hang out and stuff."

"You mean, go on a date?" asked Connie while Steven squeed silently nearby.

"I totally mean a date!" cried Sadie, once again showing off the powerful, carrying voice she'd inherited. Connie wasn't sure but she suspected she'd also heard the blonde's voice echo across town. Sadie cleared her throat. "Sorry, I know it's kind of a rude thing to do, cancelling on you but-"

Connie shook her head and cracked a smile, as much at Steven's big-eyed expression of joy as any happiness she felt for Sadie. "No, I get it. This is important to you. We can watch scary movies some other night." She really didn't understand _why_ Sadie was attracted to Lars, but that said attraction existed hadn’t been a surprise for some time.

"Okay, cool!" said Sadie, panting a little over the phone. "I'll text later with days I'm free. Bye Connie! Oh, and bye Steven."

"Bye Sadie," said Connie and Steven in unison. Before ending the call, however, Connie asked, "Hey, uh, Sadie. Are you running?"

Connie honestly wouldn't put it past the blonde to forget to tell her about the monster chasing her across Beach City when she had news like this to share.

"Oh, yeah. I'm hurrying home from Buck's. I've got to get ready. Anyway, bye." Sadie apparently forgot to hang up the phone because in the background, before Connie terminated the call herself, she heard, "Do I have any eyeliner left? Ugh, I'm going to need to shave my legs t-"

By the time Connie had her phone away, Steven was bouncing with excitement, curls straining against the sparkly red scrunchie he was wearing. "Eeee!" squealed her friend. "Lars and Sadie going on a date! Do you think they'll get married? Can I be the flower girl?! Flower boy? Oh my gosh, I hope they let me help plan the wedding!"

Connie smiled and rolled her eyes. If there was one thing Steven loved... Okay, there were many things Steven loved, but romance loomed large among them.

Her friend continued to breathlessly deliver ideas, suggestions, and hopes for the burgeoning couple’s date, wedding, name ideas for their first six children, as well as tasteful gift ideas for their fifth, tenth, and twentieth wedding anniversaries.

After a couple of minutes Connie felt the need to pump the brakes, no matter how cute Steven's antics could be. "Maybe hold off on the wedding magazines for a bit-"

"I have subscriptions to three of them!"

"-and wait. It's just one date." Connie blinked. "One unexpected date. Out of the blue." She turned to face Steven directly. "Is this weird?"

"Don't care! Romance!"

With that, Connie managed to get enough word in edgewise to ask if she could come to his house for dinner tonight. Her evening was suddenly free, after all. He agreed, they texted their respective parents, and Connie offered to help him with his schoolwork.

Oddly enough, she was finding she missed homework a little. How long had it been since the launch again?

As Steven held the door to his house open for Connie he looked thoughtful for a moment. "Oh yeah, I meant to ask earlier: why a rainbow shark with dreadlocks? I get that it's supposed to be Bismuth, but a shark?"

"Lapis sometimes teases Bismuth about not having a neck," offered the girl. "I remember her mentioning it after we watched this episode of _Futurama_ together where this-" and the door closed as Steven stepped in after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art was drawn by BurdenKing.
> 
>  **EDIT:** The image of Connie and Steven loading the _Sentinels_ collectors edition box into Wolf was drawn by MJ, as commissioned by the wonderful [Cyberwraith9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyberwraith9/pseuds/Cyberwraith9). A big thanks to C9 for both the commission and permission to share the pic freely.
> 
> The fractal used in the chapter's art was from [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/), a fine source for free images.
> 
> Well, this has been a long time coming, hasn't it? If you're curious, you can go back to Ep9 or the canon omake [Story of a Sidekick](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/26264052) for more clues on what's going on. Though a quick glance at our internal Subplots document shows at least 16 chapters that have dropped hints about all this, so there's details sprinkled all over. Anyway, see you next Wednesday for the next exciting installment of _The New Lars!_
> 
> Another episode bingo card, created by the ever-excellent [BinaryGeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BinaryGeek/pseuds/BinaryGeek) from speculation within the Connie Swap Discord, made with only the episode's title and summary for guidance. Bravo you wonderful theorists and speculators.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	2. Laramie 2.0

Colors. Shapes. Grand vistas, but fleeting ones, like catching a glimpse of a face in a car speeding past. It was frustrating. Dreams could be fun, or scary, or weird. Connie hadn't realized dreams could be annoying too.

Something bright came into view, a spotlight. Connie reoriented her ephemeral dream form to better focus on it and-

It was... wow. 

It was... _Impressive._

An inadequate description but the best she could do.

When the fractal landscape vanished suddenly, Connie was so irate she actually woke up, the roar of her blood suddenly loud in her ears. She felt the sofa bed shift underneath her as if conforming to her body, which was odd because she'd been laying there all night. Laying there annoyed.

Stupid dream.

Connie reached over and grabbed the glass of water off her bedside. It wasn't a nightstand like she had at home, it was just the coffee table, repositioned to serve that purpose while she was sleeping on her dad's couch. She took a drink, glanced at the time, and then laid back down.

Tossing and turning, the girl managed to find sleep once more. Her dreams were the normal sort of surreal and the rest of the night passed uneventfully.

* * *

The Big Donut was much closer to her dad's apartment than the Beach House. And Connie could walk down Thayer to get there instead of rounding the cliff face beneath Lighthouse Park. Still, a part of her missed the familiar trek across the well-worn sandy path, making a morning snack run for Lapis, Peridot, and herself.

Connie stopped a few paces away from the entrance, making sure her hearing aid was on and that she hadn't left her dad's apartment with something stuck to her outfit. After walking around town one time with a sock static clinging to her dress all day, Connie had gotten in the habit of checking. Made her glad she had a power sink again.

Outfit clear, hearing aid checked, Connie entered the shop, a bell giving a light ‘ding-a-ling’ to announce her. Sadie paused from pacing in front of the display case to turn her head towards the door. She wasn't looking directly at Connie so much as gazing into the distance that Connie happened to be part of.

"Lars quit!" she said in a raised voice. Her face was lined with worry, her eyes looked harried, and some of her hair was sticking out of place, probably from the blonde running her hands through it.

"He quit?" Several kinds of surprise all tried to climb into the statement.

"He quit!" She resumed pacing, gesticulating as she went. "We went to dinner, we watched a movie, he told off my mom in this big fight, and this morning he quit. By text."

"What was that about a fight?" asked Connie. She walked over to the table she'd dozed off on the day before, pulled the seat out, and gestured to it in invitation.

Sadie paced over then collapsed into the seat, sitting sideways in Connie's direction, face burying itself in her palms. She ran her hands up her face and through her hair, further mussing the blonde strands in the process.

"We were in the middle of watching _The Organ Pickler, Part Seven_ -"

Connie made a face at the title.

"Yeah, it's schlocky, but there's a mythology they build up across parts one through six that's actually kind of interesting and-" Sadie caught herself and shook her head. "Not important. Anyway, Mom comes down to tell me about some more singing competitions in the tri-state area she found and Lars tells her to leave me the f-udge alone," the blonde stumbling over a word mid-sentence.

Connie's eyes went wide. She'd never seen Sadie's mom angry before but the woman had the kind of physical presence and intense personality that made her want to keep it that way.

Sadie recognized the look and nodded. "Yeah. It was bad. A minute later and Mom's shouting and Lars is shouting and then Mom said he could leave through the door in the next minute or the wall in the next five and he stormed off." She mopped her face once more. "It was awful and things are sooo awkward at home right now."

Listening to her inner Steven, Connie stepped closer and patted the clerk's shoulder. A few seconds later, Sadie leaned her head against Connie's torso, just staring at the floor and taking deep breaths.

"And then he quit?" asked Connie after some time had passed.

"And then he quit." Sadie fished her phone out of her pocket, tapped the screen a few times, then held the device up to Connie.

_* LaBa - 09:18am | Not coming in I quit_  
_* SaMi - 09:18am | What!_  
_* LaBa - 09:19am | I quit_  
_* SaMi - 09:20am | Really?!_  
_* LaBa - 09:20am | Really_  
_* SaMi - 09:21am | Ifyou ned a day off or someting I can cover for u_

And there was no response despite Sadie having sent, with progressively worse spelling, a few other questions and concessions.

Connie tried to think of something to say and was at a loss. Her inner Steven suggested a hug, the offer to talk to Lars, and the assurance that it would all be okay. Which was all very well coming from Steven, but Connie felt less confident of her ability to pull it off.

Or offer to talk to Lars without grimacing.

Fortunately, Connie was spared by the ‘ding-a-ling’ of the door and the sound of two people laughing.

"-ride the McFly out to the road work on the west side of town. There are some digital road hazard signs that Dot Matrix could hack to say-"

Peridot froze mid-sentence and mid-entrance, Lapis bumping into the back of her from the sudden stop.

"Whoa, what the-" Blue hands reached into and then parted yellow hair, offering Lapis a view into the shop. "Oh, hey Connie. Cute outfit!" She nudged Peridot so the technician stepped through the entryway, then squeezed past her, letting the door close. "You here to fuel up on fried awesome too?"

Connie nodded faintly, mouth hanging open. Not because she was surprised to see Lapis or Peridot... despite it being an awkward and unwanted encounter. No, it was because Peridot was wearing a _Camp Pining Hearts_ t-shirt, alien-patterned boxers, and holding the hovering skateboard like she'd escaped from an 80s commercial that featured the words 'RADICAL' and 'TUBULAR!' The skateboard was lime-green, with yellow lightning bolts and neon blue starburst patterns decorating it.

It made Lapis' backwards ballcap seem tame in comparison.

"I- I was-" It was then that Connie noticed the fingerless gloves Peridot had over her limb enhancers. Her face shifted through several expressions of surprise and confusion before she gave up and said, "I was just going."

She shot Sadie an apologetic look and then shimmied past the pair, nearly running as she exited the Big Donut. From there she fled swiftly back to her dad's apartment, the entire way thinking of an old brochure Steven had shown her months ago.

 _'Pierre: the Fun One',_ it had read below a picture of Peridot as Connie had never seen her before. Or hadn't until today.

* * *

It took Connie a while to work up the courage to go back outside for fear of running into Jasper with a side ponytail or Bismuth in a sleeveless Hulkamania shirt. But Steven was in class and couldn't hold up his end of the text conversation very well, and Dad hummed while he worked. She should have been able to turn off her hearing aid and ignore it, but she'd heard it enough during her stay that her brain provided the sound for her.

Even after all these months, the auditory hallucinations remained to fill the silence.

So Connie eventually left, steering clear of the boardwalk to avoid chance encounters with Pierre and Lupus. She was just walking past some road work signs that read 'Dot Matrix Rulez' for some inexplicable reason when she saw Buck Dewey leaning in the shade of a building. As ever, he looked characteristically cool, reflecting on the world behind his reflective sunglasses.

Connie smiled and waved, the zen third of the Cool Kids giving her an acknowledging tilt of the head. As Connie got closer she saw Jenny standing nearby.

"I'll be all over the pizza portion," she said, the self-assured smirk audible in her voice.

"Pizza's your name and pizza's your game, right?" said a third voice that made Connie freeze in her tracks.

"Ha! Totally," answered Jenny.

Buck looked thoughtful. Well, more thoughtful than usual. "Is your family named after pizza or is pizza named after your family? It's like a serpent biting its tail... and it tastes like mozzarella."

Connie rounded the corner and saw Lars completing the triangle of coolness, hands in his pockets, a small smile on his lips. He saw her, made a five point scan of the area, then said, "Hi Connie. Whaddya want?"

He certainly didn't sound happy to see her but there was a lack of the usual... Larsiness to rub Connie the wrong way.

"Oh, I'm just taking a walk. Although-" She paused, wondering if she should bring up Sadie's bombshells from this morning. Wanting a better feel of the situation, she instead asked, "What are you guys up to?"

"We're going to the Pieathlon," answered Jenny as if that explained... anything. 

"It's a three part cooking competition," elaborated Buck. "Jenny covers the pizza portion. I'm making Sagan pie. Lars is going to win us the freestyle event with his Ube roll."

Connie had many questions just then, but the first to tumble out of her mouth was, "Sagan pie?"

"You know that science guy from _Cosmos_?" said Jenny. "He said you had to invent a universe if you wanted to make a pie that was, like, _really_ from scratch."

"The recipe takes a while," conceded Buck.

"Oh, uh, okay," answered Connie. She looked at Lars again, expression quizzical. She knew he was a capable cook from their time together on Mask Island, but when she tried to envision Lars in a baking competition alongside Buck and Jenny her imagination threw an error: 404, mental image not found.

"So I went by the Big Donut this morning," she started but fell silent when a pair of adults rounded a corner, striding purposefully over.

One was a tall and slender woman with long ginger hair and small, round glasses on her nose, both smile lines and worry lines visible on her face. She was wearing a blue and yellow fish-patterned dress and white sandals over what were either knee-high purple socks or stockings. As the outfit wasn't Eighties-tastic, Connie didn't even bat an eyelash.

The other was a man who was in many ways the woman's opposite: short and stocky, bald save for a rim of dark-brown hair along the side and back of his head, and dressed in business formal clothes. Even his glasses --gold-rimmed and rectangular-- contrasted.

Connie had seen them around town over the years but she'd never had cause to talk with them before.

Lars groaned and slumped forward, in that moment looking much more like his usual self to Connie.

"Laramie," cried the woman. "We heard from Barbara Miller that you quit your job!?"

_Laramie?_

Lars' slump deepened. "Mom, it's Lars, we've talked about this." Then his eyes narrowed and he said with more venom in his voice, "And miss Miller needs to stop butting into people's lives."

 _LARAMIE?_ shouted Connie internally, still grappling with that reveal.

"Son," said the man in a softly reproachful tone, pushing his glasses up his nose as he did. "We know you weren't thrilled with the job, but you can't go back on our agreement like this: we support you and don't pry so long as you hold a steady job and continue your online courses."

"I'm done with those too," barked Lars, arms crossed defensively over his chest.

The woman clutched the man and wailed, "Oh Dante! It's just like the juvenile detention days all over again!"

Lars made a slashing motion and said forcefully, "I was only working that stupid job and doing those stupid classes because I knew you guys would freak out if I didn't."

"We are freaking out!" they cried in unison.

"Whatever, I don't care now," and Lars turned his back on the pair. "I have better things to do than sell donuts or- or worry what people think about me."

The woman, Connie hadn't gotten her name, turned and fled, whimpering. Dante gave his son a disappointed look then hustled after her.

Turning away from the pair, Connie felt eyes boring into her and saw Lars glaring daggers. Honestly, the second-hand familial strife and parental disapproval was enough to set Connie's teeth on edge, so she hardly needed the push to bid a hasty goodbye to Buck and Jenny before retreating down a side street.

In the distance she thought she could make out Lars and his fellow pieathletes talking but she wasn't sure. It was hard enough to catch details like that when she had two working hearing aids.

A few blocks removed from the scene, Connie leaned against the corner of a building and tried to gather her thoughts. There'd been a tiny gnawing sense of unease she'd been feeling since Sadie's surprise date last night, but she'd dismissed it, same as she'd had second thoughts about the importance of her weird color dream. Was Lars acting Lars-strange, or was this something else? Between gem magic and negative energy pollution, not all destiny-related problems took the form of rampaging monsters.

Connie fished out her phone and stared at the time. _Dang it! There's still a few more minutes before Steven's lunch break starts._ She _really_ wanted to reach out to her destiny partner on this.

 _However,_ and the hand holding the phone dropped a little, doubts settling in once more, _Lars' mom implied that Lars had misbehaved like this before. Am I just spooked and mistaking regular melodrama for the magical kind? I mean, it's not exactly far-fetched that Lars would be a jerk inside the home as well as outside it._

The phone slowly went back in Connie's pocket, the girl taking a steadying breath. Maybe she was overre-

"Connie! Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I found you!"

 _Flying what?!_ Connie turned and saw Ronaldo running her way and panting for breath. For some reason he was wearing an actual breastplate over army fatigues, he had a dozen or more necklaces bouncing against his chest including one made of a string of garlic, and his curly blonde hair was escaping the corners of a tinfoil hat.

"Huh?" she asked, there being quite a lot about this scene she was unsure of.

Rather than answer, Ronaldo staggered forward a few more paces, stopped to lean against the building to catch his breath, walked a few more feet, rested his arms on his knees wheezing, held up a finger for Connie to wait, staggered the rest of the way over, gripped Connie's shoulders, and then said dramatically in her face, "SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH LARS!"

Assaulted by the proximity, the volume, and the overwhelming smell of garlic, Connie swept Ronaldo's hands off her and retreated back a few feet. "What?!"

Then, wrinkling her nose, she circled the deranged fry cook until she was upwind.

"Lars is clearly being mind-controlled! The sneople are advancing their agenda! Case Nightmare Chartreuse is coming!" he ranted.

Connie shook her head as if trying to physically banish the ever-mounting pile of strange Ronaldo was inflicting on her. "Hold on. Just, uh, tell me about the first one."

"Well, in the seventh century, the mad prophet Abdul Alhazred foretold that-"

"What? No, not the first chronologically, I meant about Lars. Why do you think he's been mind-controlled?"

"Oh, very well," said Ronaldo, looking a little disappointed. "I keep an exhaustive psychological profile on everyone in town so I can stay alert for these kinds of mental invasions. Lars' behavior this morning was a metaphysical tripwire tripped."

"Don't you mean metaphorical?"

"That too. We're suffering a mental invasion, Connie," he said with an air of grim authority. He tried to dust himself off casually but one of his necklaces got caught on the sleeve of his fatigues and he inadvertently yanked his neck forward. This caused his tinfoil hat to fall off. He was wearing a second, smaller tinfoil hat underneath, but he still scrambled to retrieve the first and put it back into position.

That accomplished he looked at her with complete seriousness and said, "I hope you appreciate the gravity of this situation."

 _I have a deeper appreciation for Peedee wanting you to meet with Dr. Brooks,_ she thought.

What she said, though, was, "What did Lars do this morning that has you so-" _crazed_ "-alarmed?"

"Oh, that. He apologized to me."

"He what?"

"We used to be friends when we were younger, then he turned on me rather than face the Truth of the Conspiracy," Ronaldo somehow able to enunciate the capital letters in 'Conspiracy' and 'Truth.'

"But... Aren't you glad he's apologizing?"

"What?" he asked while attempting to detangle one of his necklaces, a pendant with a strange, star-shaped glyph carved into it, from the string of garlic. "Not really. He was a huge jerk, he spent years picking on me, and I got over him and moved on with my life. Him apologizing would, in abstract, be a good thing, but he's not doing it for the right reasons. He's a puppet. Or an accident. He needs help! If I accepted his apology I'd only be feeding his delusion," and with that he went back to trying to get what Connie was suspecting was an Elder Sign unhooked from a bulb of garlic.

She'd played a couple of Lovecraft-themed board games at Jeff's house.

"Um, okay. But why did you run to me?"

"Actually, I went to the senior members of your squad of polymorphic rock people first but one said I needed to, quote, 'take a chill pill,' unquote, and then hover-skated away. The other threatened to give me a bath in the bay if I didn't stay downwind."

Connie hung her head a little at that, then gave Ronaldo a long and searching look. "And you're _sure_ this isn't Lars acting on his own?"

Ronaldo looked at Connie like she was crazy. "He told me he was sorry for being such a huge jerk."

Connie's face went slack and her mouth dropped open.

Ronaldo nodded, once more attempting to affect an air of seriousness despite the afternoon sun reflecting off his outermost tinfoil hat. "I see you've accepted the Truth. Good. I'll leave you to your psychic inquiries."

While Ronaldo tried to depart dramatically, Connie fumbled for her phone and jammed the button to call Steven. Holding the device up to her good ear, she heard the call connect and she said, "Steven, I think we might have a Light Side coach emergency."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Anawinkaro](https://anawinkaro.tumblr.com/tagged/anawinkaro.drawings), being the delight she is, took up the cry from some of our AO3 commentors for side-ponytail!Jasper and hulkamania!Bismuth and delivered these doodles. Have I mentioned Anawinkaro is great? Because Anawinkaro is great.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	3. Insubstantiated

While _'my friend really wants to talk about something'_ wasn't enough to let you go off campus for lunch, there actually _was_ a school rule about letting _'affiliated youths depart school grounds for Crystalline Gem business.'_

Yes, there was a list. Yes, Steven was on the list. And no, they wouldn't tell him who else was on that list or even how old the list was. He was free to go during his lunch break but if he wasn't back in time for his math class then he'd be marked truant.

Connie was on the phone with Steven, both of them traveling in the other's direction so they could meet in the middle and maximize their window of time. Steven had grabbed some snacks on the way out.

"So, hypothetically speaking," asked Connie, power walking down the road, phone to her good ear, "what would happen if Lars was less of a self-conscious jerk?"

There was a sound of a bag rustling and a phone being repositioned. "You mean magically?" asked Steven. "Or from realizing that the world isn't actually as scary or judgmental as he thinks it is and growing past that to realize he's surrounded by friends who love and care about him?"

"Uh, the first one?"

"Oh, I'm not really sure," answered the teen. "Probably something bad though."

"Really?" remarked Connie, taken aback. She wasn't surprised at that being the outcome; between recent events and the faint whiff of garlic clinging to her clothes, there could be no doubt. But she did have to wonder how Steven came to that conclusion so quickly. "Because being less of a jerk seems like a pretty straight-forward improvement."

"Sort of," said the voice over the phone, her mental image of Steven furrowing his brows as he tried to think of how to phrase things. "But Lars acts the way he does because he has a hard time liking himself. He's not a bad guy, he just gets a little sad and scared when people are around, which is why he can be a bit of a sour puss."

_A bit of a sour puss, he says,_ thought Connie, pinching the bridge of her nose. All too easily she could recall how Lars had annoyed her to the point of activating a hitherto unknown and freaky power. A sour puss indeed.

Connie sighed and reminded herself of the circumstances and who she was talking with. The situation was bad and if her Light Side coach --who was also her best friend and the nicest person she'd ever met-- knew the answer, she should listen.

"Okay, but how does that mean a magically less-jerky Lars is bad?"

"People have reasons they do stuff and reasons they don't do stuff," explained her friend. "Lars has a reason he does rude stuff, because he doesn't want people to think that he thinks about what people think. And if Lars got better, grew as a person, then he'd have different, better reasons for not doing rude stuff. But that doesn't happen to magical-Lars. Magical-Lars doesn't do the rude stuff anymore, but he also does the other stuff his worrying-what-people-think part was keeping him from doing. Like, I don't know, there being something he doesn’t want to do but his mom and dad want him to do it and he doesn’t want to disappoint them so he does it anyway. Only now he doesn’t do it because he doesn’t care what they think."

Connie felt a cold lump settle in her stomach as she walked and Steven talked. By the time he finished (and grabbed a bite of his snack, from the sounds of things), she was staring into the middle distance, her free hand having found its way up to her gemstone.

"Like-" She licked her lips. "Like quitting his job at the Big Donut or yelling at Sadie's mom?"

There was the sound of a swallow and then, "Yeah! Like that!" A pause. "Why, what did he do?"

"Quit his job at the Big Donut and yelled at Sadie's mom," answered Connie in a soft voice. "Oh, and quit doing college classes online, which is freaking his parents out. But!" she said hastily, "he also asked Sadie out on a date and is going to a cooking competition with Buck and Jenny and he apologized to Ronaldo. That's got to count for something, right?"

By this point the distant, curly-haired figure of her friend was visible on the road ahead, the teen waving and receiving a wave back. "It does," she heard him say over her phone. "It means there's all this good in Lars just waiting to come out. And after we help him not be magical-messy-Lars then maybe we can help him be better-Lars."

It wasn’t succinctly put but it was clear her Light Side coach knew what he was talking about.

By the time Steven was close enough to make out Connie's expression, she was smiling at him, half-lidded eyes twinkling. He was wearing shorts and his new _Crying Breakfast Friends_ shirt, the one with Sniffling Croissant and Glum Glass hugging and crying, one of the other things he'd purchased while at the really big game store in Crossroads. His hair was pulled back into a bushy ponytail constrained by a sparkling red scrunchie. An empty Chaaaaps wrapper was sticking out of one pocket.

"How did you get so people-smart?" asked Connie into her phone despite Steven being close enough to be spoken to directly.

Steven gave her an ear-to-ear grin and said into his phone, "All I did was take my visor off so I could see the shark. A lot of people forget to do that."

Connie’s smile remained but her eyes grew worried as she reached up and wiggled her ear. "Will it be okay?" she asked, her expression tender.

Steven nodded and wiggled her nose with his finger.

Then he said into his phone, "Okay, I've got to let you go, Connie. I'll talk with you real soon," at the same time Connie said into her phone, "Bye Steven. I'll be in touch!"

The pair laughed as they each ended the call and put away their phones.

Connie looped her arm through Steven's, leading the teen back the way she'd come.

"So, remember that dream I told you about?"

* * *

After assuring Steven that, no, she would not be able to fall asleep on demand to try and repeat the power, the two of them decided to find Lars and let Connie try to do her thing awake, but from hiding. That way she'd have time to make her attempts. It also meant Lars wouldn't accuse her of ruining his life and running away.

They knew from the island that he could move pretty quickly when he needed to.

They first found him eating some fries on the boardwalk.

Ronaldo was visible a little ways off, fatigues worn over his necklaces and breastplate this time, making for a very lumpy, boxy silhouette. He was wearing (foil-wrapped) headphones and waving a metal detector over the sand, all while trying and failing to keep an inconspicuous eye on Lars.

He gave Connie and Steven an exaggerated wink, prompting the two to disappear into hiding when Lars turned around to see who Ronaldo was winking at.

Probably three minutes of intense concentration later, Connie had no luck and Lars had wandered off.

A minute later Peridot hover-skated quickly down the boardwalk, cackling madly, Lapis winging just overhead. A little later Mayor Dewey's van drove after them, the mayor shaking his fist at them out the driver-side window while the van-mounted speakers warbled, ‘Major Dummy ~ Major Dummy.’

* * *

Lars was loitering behind Fish Stew Pizza, doing something on his phone.

Connie and Steven were crouched behind a dumpster, Connie squinting at Lars like she was trying to set him on fire with her mind. Not what she was doing this time, but the expression was a familiar one.

Ronaldo was across the street waving his metal detector over the pavement and casting sly looks in Lars' direction. People made a point of crossing the street before walking past him.

Eventually Jenny emerged from the back of Fish Stew Pizza and spoke with Lars a little, fragments of talk about pieathlon drifting over. Then Kofi's voice rang out from within the restaurant and Jenny went back inside.

* * *

Lars was cutting through Dewey Park.

Ronaldo was apparently looking for lost gold in the trunk of a tree, waving his metal detector over the bark.

Connie and Steven were hiding in a bush. Steven sneezed.

"What the-" asked Lars, turning their way.

Ronaldo facepalmed, then had to wave his metal detector around to drive off the gulls attracted to his shiny, foil-wrapped headwear.

"If that's Sour Cream's little brother and his trench coat friends, I'll- Steven?"

At a loss for what to do, her friend had jumped out of the bush so that Connie could stay hidden.

"Hi Lars," he said, trying on different guilty expressions before finding a smile to wear instead. Steven wasn’t great at lying.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school?" asked the (former) clerk after a second.

"Yeah! I mean, I was, but now I'm not. Because... I was... looking for..." The teen looked around frantically, "Ronaldo!"

Ronaldo, mid-melee with a trio of gulls, looked up surprised. "Me?" That gave one of the gulls a chance to get a grip on his headphones. "Gah! Hey, let go of my headband of mind shielding!"

"Yeah. Hi Ronaldo! I wanted to make sure you got that frame for your signed picture of Bigfoot."

Gulls driven off, Ronaldo dusted the feathers from his lumpy fatigues, his headphones askew. "Ah, the autographed _Voleur Violet_ print. Yes, the frame arrived in the mail two days ago. It's resting in my decontamination chamber now so that any chemicals dusted on it by the Conspiracy-affiliated members of the postal service will expire. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Steven's phone alarm started to chime. "Oh phooey, I have to get back to class. Bye Ronaldo. Bye Lars. Bye Co-mpletely empty bushes."

With that he turned and started to walk in the direction of the school, a forced grin plastered on his face.

Lars watched him go with a confused expression. "Right. Uh, bye." A beat later he shook his head and walked off, being sure to give Steven a wide berth as he went.

Ronaldo turned toward the bushes and gave Connie a knowing look. "Amateur help, am I right?" He reached up with his metal detector to scratch the corner of his ear when the device detected the foil, squealing loudly through his headphones.

"Gah!" cried the older Fryman brother, flailing then falling over. A thud --"Oof"-- was followed by a clang --"Ow"-- as the the metal detector landed handle-first across his breastplate. Cloves beneath his fatigues crushed, the garlic smell redoubled.

Connie fled the area the moment Lars was out of sight.

* * *

"Hi mom. I'm home," called Sadie. She looked around the living room, listening carefully for any sounds of her mother. Coast clear, she turned and waved behind her, Connie and Steven hustling into the Miller residence after her.

Sadie pulled out her phone and glanced at it. "It's ten 'til six. Mom should be running errands until seven. Assuming Lars gets here on time, is that going to give you time enough to undo... whatever it was that you did to him?"

Connie couldn’t miss the pleading look in Sadie's eyes as she asked. She nodded, feigning confidence she didn't feel. "Yeah. Steven and I think this power worked at the Big Donut because Lars was nearby and not moving too much-"

"Yeah, that sounds like Lars at work," muttered the blonde sourly.

"-So if I hide in your room while you two talk or watch a movie or something, I should be able to undo what I did before." _I hope,_ she thought to herself, once again hoping this wasn't a power that required her to be asleep. If it did, this wasn’t going to be resolved easily. Or quickly. Or absent a really awkward sleepover party.

Steven, home from school and the architect of tonight's ruse, nodded in agreement.

Sadie gave the pair another searching look while wringing her hands, then gave a curt nod of her own and led the three of them toward the door to the basement-cum-bedroom.

While descending the steps, Connie remarked, "I'm still surprised you believed us about the whole 'Lars was mind-whammied' thing."

Sadie looked back over her shoulder, not slowing as she walked the familiar steps to her room. "Connie, I've faced down a giant shadow monster in an abandoned quarry, spent a couple of days on an island hunting the _Gremlins 2_ knock-offs of it, been turned into a walking horror movie trope, twice, you're wearing my cheek scar-"

Connie's hand went up to her right cheek, touching the vertical scar. It was still a little sensitive to the touch but no longer needed a bandage.

"-And that's not counting the semi-regular weirdness that follows you into the Big Donut or to events around town. At this point, if you told me you were half ghost, I'd probably believe you."

Connie had no response to that and walked the rest of the way in silence.

"Okay, Connie, you go hide in that closet over there," said Sadie, pointing across the room. "Do you need to be able to see to do your whatever magic?"

"Maaaybe?" squeaked out Connie, shoulders shrugging.

"Okay, then I'll leave the door open a crack." Sadie shoved all the stuff on the floor of the closet to one side, then pushed all the clothes hanging up to the far side of the rail, giving Connie enough space. The girl stepped in and then Sadie rolled the sliding door closed, leaving a two-inch gap for Connie to peer through. It was a little cramped, there certainly wasn't room for Steven, but Connie figured she could find a comfortable position from which to (hopefully) work her magic.

"Steven, you- uh- you-" Sadie was looking around trying to find a spot for the stocky teen.

"Bathroom?" suggested the boy, the door to that being adjacent to the closet Connie was hiding in.

Sadie pulled a face. "No, Lars might go in there."

"Oh, I know! I can sit in the corner there and you can bury me under all your cute stuffed animal friends. If you turn the TV this way and you guys share your bean bag chair, then he won't be able to see me, or Connie, and I'll be able to sign to Connie if I have any ideas. What do you think?"

Sadie stared at the corner in question, then at Steven, then the rest of the room, then back to Steven. "I guess it'll have to do. But, are you sure you have to be here for this? It makes the whole thing more complicated." She scratched the back of her neck. "And creepier, now that I think about it."

Connie slid the closet door open a little. "If the sneaky way doesn't work then we'll have to talk to Lars about it directly. Steven was able to phrase it really well, earlier," and she shot Steven a pleased smile. "Plus, I doubt Lars is going to want much to do with me if we get that far, which is another reason to have Steven here."

There was a sound upstairs of the front door being knocked on. Sadie's eyes went wide. "Oh shoot! He's here!" She glanced at a digital clock on her nightstand. "He's here early? You really must have mind-whammied him. Okay, quick, in the corner. Connie, close the closet more."

The knocking upstairs repeated. Sadie ran over to the base of the stairs and shouted up, "Just a minute," then hurried back over to shovel stuffed animals over Steven.

A frantic sixty seconds later and Sadie was running up the steps. Below, a pink teddy bear rolled to the base of the stuffed animal pile, revealing a recess that Steven could look through. The mound shuffled slightly and a hand emerged to sign _Good luck_ to Connie before disappearing back within.

Connie tried to feel optimistic about this but the best she could come up with was, _Well, at least Ronaldo isn't here this time._

* * *

It wasn't working!

Connie wanted to pound her head against the closet door, but doing that would only make the situation worse. Looking at the clock on Sadie's nightstand she saw that she'd been trying to repeat her previous power use for more than half an hour. Lars was sitting on the bean bag chair with Sadie snuggled up to him, the pair not even ten feet away. They were watching the rest of _The Organ Pickler, Part Seven_ , the film having been cut short yesterday by Lars and Barbara Miller's shouting match.

Connie hadn't even been asleep in the Big Donut this long before she woke up on the floor, being poked by Lars and asked to leave. And he'd been in the back of the shop for some, if not all of that time, and so had been farther away. It wasn't proximity, it wasn't time, it wasn’t line-of-sight needed here and Connie was getting a headache from trying.

Maybe she really did need to be asleep.

In the corner of her vision, positioned behind the chair-bound pair, she saw Steven's hands emerge enough to sign at her, _You can do it!_ adding a beat later, _Also, this movie is really scary._

Connie couldn't sign back without giving herself away, but she gave her friend a smile anyway. She was still a little in awe at Steven's reasoning earlier, the way he understood Lars well enough to effectively diagnose an unknown magical malady without even realizing it. She'd always kind of envied Steven's ability to just _get_ people, a talent Connie had never-

Light. Silence. Colors.

With her eyes, Connie was watching Sadie and Lars sit together on a bean bag chair, with Steven hidden under a pile of stuffed animals in the corner. In her mind, she could see a brilliant fractal landscape, awash in colors and patterns and _meaning_.

It was as though she'd formed a mental picture in her head, but the picture was so sharp, so vivid, so _compelling_ , that it was hard to pay attention to the world in front of her eyes.

There was hope. There was happiness. There was trust and enthusiasm. There was-

Connie's eyes went wider even though she wasn't using them to perceive this incomparable vista. 

Looking closer with her mind's eye, she could see veins of insecurity, splashes of embarrassment here and there, with a fine dotting of worries, but overall it was radiant. It was... _Impressive._

And it absolutely wasn't Lars' mindscape.

With an act of will, Connie wrenched her focus away from _that_ and back to the tangible world around her. It was quiet. Completely, utterly, quieter-than-she'd-ever-heard quiet. Connie reached up to fiddle with her hearing aid and felt... nothing. Something blurred in front of her eyes as her hand passed through empty space that should have been, well, her.

During all of this, radiant in her mind's eye, like the most amazing landscape portrait imaginable, was that pattern of color and meaning.

Moving her hand forward, she saw another blur and then recognized a very close up view of her own arm. She wiggled her fingers. She tried to scratch her nose. Her finger went through her nose. Not up her nostril, but _through_ the top of her nose, the digit disappearing beyond what she could see staring at herself cross-eyed.

Connie yelped, or tried to but there was absolutely no sound. Or heat, having been kind of warm and stuffy in Sadie's closet earlier. Even the carpet beneath her feet felt indistinct and completely unyielding; she could tell there was something there, but if she'd been forced to guess, she would have said it was featureless concrete, not the short fabric lining the bottom of the closet.

The image was still there and it was so-

_No! Focus!_ Connie rose unsteadily to her feet. She tried to lean against the frame of the closet and found it slippery, like oiled metal instead of wood. Suddenly, she found herself toppling forward towards the narrow two-inch gap in front of her. She threw her arms up and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the impact and then...

Through her closed, transparent eyelids Connie saw herself soundlessly _ooze_ through the gap, the closet door not moving in the slightest as a nearly-fourteen-year-old girl squeezed out of it. She also saw Sadie and then Lars look at her in abject shock as she landed shoulder-first on the floor of Sadie's room.

There was no impact with the floor, only the _suggestion_ of an impact.

Immediately Connie felt two other vistas appear. One was a swirling tangle of colored bands, branching to infinity, shining emotions kept carefully compartmentalized like beads within an endless tapestry. The other was unmistakably Lars'.

As Sadie and Lars appeared to be scrambling out of the bean bag chair in the world that Connie could scarcely focus on, Connie was aware of just how much Lars' mindscape had reverted. The black branch of self-consciousness she'd narrowed to a trickle had widened back on its own to probably two-thirds its former width. With that instinctive _understanding_ that came with the yellow glow suffusing her, Connie knew it would be back to the way it had been in another couple of hours, by the morning at the latest.

Looking closer she could see a faint blur in the pattern, like a hairline scar, an irregularity that ran along the place she'd altered before. Tapping into that same understanding, she knew it was superficial --it would no more impact Lars' mind than the scar on Connie's cheek would impact her hearing-- and yet there it was: a tiny out-of-place detail that would forever linger.

Something was thrown at Connie. Oh, Lars had picked up and thrown his cup. It was a red Dixie cup, plastic, but it contained clear water or soda. Connie swung out to bat it away. Her hand traveled unimpeded through the fluid but the cup itself was an unstoppable force, her hand shoved painlessly aside. When the container reached Connie's chest, she felt herself pushed back slightly before the stuff of her chest flowed _around_ the cup, the projectile passing through her completely.

Even when she'd been pushed back, there had been no impact, only the suggestion of one.

The absolute silence was unnerving as well.

_Wow, okay, Lars looks really upset. I should probably finish fixing him, quick, before he throws something else._ She wasn't sure what would happen if he chucked the bean bag chair at her and she wasn't particularly keen to find out.

Focusing on the fractal landscape --it was something she did easily, even readily-- Connie's mental hands reached out for the narrow branch of black. It moved but it was slow, like trying to run an ice cream scoop through ice cream that had been sitting too long in the back of the freezer. She must have spent minutes last time making the changes she did. Minutes she probably didn't have now.

Okay, what could she change? Maybe if she calmed him down somehow she could- No, that wouldn't budge. Nor would that. That patch of color over there was like pulling against a too-strong resistance band. What about-

Something moved. It moved a lot, the easiest thing in the world to shift, like trailing her fingers through water.

His pupils narrow pinpricks of black, Lars clapped his hands to the sides of his face, gave what looked like a really loud scream, and then fled in a blind panic up the stairs.

Sadie and a newly-emerged Steven winced at what Connie assumed was a door slamming loudly.

A few seconds later the Lars vista vanished. Connie made a point of not focusing on either Steven's or Sadie's.

_Are you okay?_ signed Steven.

Connie spoke. She couldn't hear herself speak and apparently neither could the others. _I think so. This is really weird,_ she signed instead.

_You came through the door like a ghost. Made of jelly._

_Then I better stay away from proton packs. Or bread,_ answered Connie with her hands.

By the time Steven had finished his surprised laugh, the world suddenly had sound again and Connie could no longer see through her outstretched hands.

The others stared at her.

"So, uh, there's good news and there's bad news..." she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	4. Mind Over Madder

“Laaars!” shouted Connie, the girl turning her head this way and that, scanning the streets of Beach City for a glimpse of orange.

“Here Lars~! Here boy~!” called Steven.

Connie gave her friend a look that was equal parts amused and perplexed. “He’s not a dog, you know.”

“I know but either he’s like a frightened animal from your mind karate --which means a happy animal call might lure him back-- or he’s a scared and angry Lars, so he might come out to yell at me for calling him like he’s a dog. It works either way.”

Connie’s smile widened a little. “Can’t fault that logic.”

Sadie walked a few paces ahead of them, drew in a deep breath like an inflating bellows, cupped her hands to her mouth, and shouted in a voice that rattled windows, “LAAARRRS!”

Steven and Connie both flinched at the mighty Miller lungs at work, each reaching up to fiddle with their hearing aids despite having only one between them. 

A bit more canvassing of the town and they still hadn’t found any sign of Lars, nor was he answering his phone no matter who called him.

“If you were a panicked Lars, where would you run?” Steven asked Sadie.

While Sadie and Steven speculated, a blur of movement caught Connie’s eye, drawing her out of the conversation. Situational awareness training kicking in, Connie made a swift survey and spotted… Lapis, winging over the boardwalk, once more towing Peridot on her hovering skateboard.

“Hey, let me see if Lapis has seen him,” interrupted Connie, already jogging in their direction. “Hey! Hey Lapis!” she shouted, waving her arms.

Even when the colorful pair made another pass the other way down the boardwalk, neither noticed, wrapped up as they were in… whatever it was they were doing.

_I need something to get their attention._ Connie cast herself back to the day of the launch -- _Why won't anyone listen to me?!_ \--, reached out -- _Why is everyone else. So. Wrong?!_ \--, and grasped the air in front of her, bathed in the glow of her gemstone.

She was holding her sword, a frown of steely determination on her face.

She waved the glowing yellow blade a little, shouting, then fired a cascade of sparks into the air. Sadie and Steven backed away a little from both the weapon and the motes of electricity.

Seeing the light show, Lapis dropped the tow line and winged over from the far-side of the boardwalk.

“Hey Con-con. What’s-”

“Have you seen Lars?” snapped Connie, a heavy dollop of frustration and a trace of anger in her voice.

Lapis recoiled.

The nature of Connie’s frown changed and she said, “Sorry, that, uh, came out harsher than I meant.” After a steadying breath, Connie said in a milder tone, “Lars got upset and ran off and we need to find him. Have you seen him anywhere?”

Lapis eyed Connie’s sword for a moment, shook her head, then jabbed a thumb over her right shoulder. “Sure. Carrot Top is up on the roof of the Big Donut. Stands out overhead like that.” She gave Connie an inviting smirk. “I can have the big ol’ water hand give him a wave; that usually sends most people running for cover.”

Connie shook her head. “No, but thanks.” She turned and looked at her sword, bathing in the wash of power and confidence it seemed to emanate before releasing it to dissolve. “Sorry for snapping at you earlier.”

In the background Peridot shouted something and waved her ski rope overhead.

Lapis turned back and shouted, “Just a sec, Dot.” Then back to Connie she said breezily, “You can make up for it with Pocky later. Are you planning on coming home anytime soon? Dot and I are doing a movie night tonight and television was pretty much invented so families could be together without having to talk. Perfect for when you two are…”

Connie was already shaking her head. “No, not yet. But you two have fun. I-” She glanced over and saw Sadie already most of the way to the Big Donut, with Steven jogging a ways behind, making frequent looks over between the blonde and Connie. “I should go.”

She gave Lapis a quick hug and then ran after the others. Behind her she heard, “Alright, Dot. Hang on tight this time because we’re going to go the full _TaleSpin_ and you’re Kit Cloudkicker.”

* * *

Lars locked the Big Donut behind him and there wasn’t an easy way up onto the roof. Sadie had offered to run back and get her keys, but Connie waved her off right after she and Steven exchanged meaningful looks. Using a quartet of force fields, Connie was able to provide an alternate way up top.

Steven scrabbled up while Sadie and Connie remained below.

“You sure he’ll be able to talk him down?” asked Sadie, the blonde pacing anxiously below.

“If anyone can, it’s Steven.” Connie was leaning against the side of the building, staring off into the distance, preoccupied with something.

Sadie’s nervous walking slowed a little bit. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. He deals with all this magical gem stuff by choice. You were born into it and Lars and I work inside the weirdness splash zone or something, but it’s not like Steven’s family couldn’t afford to move somewhere else if they wanted to.”

That seemed to draw Connie up out of the depths of her own thoughts, if only for a moment. “That’s true,” she said, turning Sadie’s observation around in her head. “He could be anywhere, but he’s here, in all of this.” She sunk back into her pensiveness, saying softly, “With me,” before lapsing once more into silence.

Sadie left the girl alone, tidying up some of the scattered litter behind the shop just to do something with her nervous energy.

Minutes passed. Eventually a curly head peered over the edge of the roof and waved. “Hey. Lars isn’t freaked out anymore and I think he’s feeling a little better too. But he, uh, he wants to talk with you, Connie. Alone.” Some of his curls had come free from his scrunchie and had to be brushed from his face. “Is that okay?”

Connie looked up at Steven, surprised, then back at Sadie. The blonde could only shrug. Looking back up, Connie said, “Okay. Just give me a second to resummon the fields. I’ll come up after you’ve gotten down.”

Sadie immediately moved to ply Steven for details while Connie clambered up, a little slow from the weight of the force fields on her mind. Once she was up at the top she saw Lars sitting on something, a vent of some kind maybe, hunched forward like a scrawnier, angstier version of Rodin’s _The Thinker_.

Connie waited until the fields faded out, then walked over to a spot in Lars’ peripheral vision and sat down. “You wanted to talk to me?” she asked uncertainly.

The wind blew the mop of carrot-colored hair this way and that. “Is it all gone?”

“I can look,” answered Connie. “I promise I won’t touch anything,” she said quickly, “but I’ll have to do that thing again.” The silence stretched out. “Steven explained it, right? What happened?”

Lars sighed. “Yeah, he did. Just get it over with.”

Connie looked at Lars, felt her emotions for that sense of not knowing, of _wanting_ to know what was going on with other people, and suddenly the world was silent, the wind no longer blowing across her skin.

She looked down at her transparent self, seeing the roof visible below. Neither her hair or her clothes moved with the breeze. _I guess it’s blowing through me now,_ which was an unsettling thought.

There were two patterns available, Lars’ and the impressive one from before. Why there wasn’t a third was beyond her; there was _so much_ about this power Connie didn’t understand.

She looked at the pattern of Lars’ mind. Of his thoughts? She couldn’t perceive memories, she couldn’t even see what he was thinking, really, just the state of his emotions and how everything interconnected. It revealed a lot but it wasn’t mind reading the way it was usually shown in stories.

There were two superficial, telltale scars this time: the one from her original change and then another where she’d caused Lars to panic. The panic was entirely gone --apparently that didn’t last long-- and the minimizing of his self-consciousness was nearly gone. She considered helping it along but thought better of it. She _knew_ it would vanish on its own and she didn’t want to risk making some other mistake.

Plus, every change seemed to leave its mark, even if it was somewhere only she could see it.

With an act of will, Connie stopped focusing on the mindscape. She peeked at the other one briefly, finding- Yes, it was still there; what she’d seen before. She closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh; a completely pointless gesture since she could see through her eyelids and it was an open question if she was breathing _anything_ when she was like this.

Lars looked over and said something she couldn’t hear. Connie started to sign at him, thought better of it, and mouthed, ‘I can’t hear you,’ while gesturing to her ear and shaking her head.

Eventually the sounds and sensations of the world returned.

“The change from yesterday is almost completely gone and it’ll be all the way gone before you wake up tomorrow. It shouldn’t be powerful enough to really affect you anymore anyway, and I didn’t want to risk it by hurrying it along.”

Lars nodded, still sullen, still silent.

“Sorry. I don’t think I said sorry yet.” Connie could see Lars in her peripheral vision but was staring at her feet. “I didn’t mean to do what I did --I thought it was just a dream at first, and the panic thing was an accident-- but you certainly didn’t want me to do it at all. So,” she took a deep breath, “I’m really sorry for all of… that.”

Lars rolled his eyes and scoffed, but refrained from saying anything biting. On the whole, it was among the better reactions she could have gotten.

Connie worried her lip as she thought something over. “I think I get it, actually.”

Lars turned and looked her way, scowling slightly.

“I can’t see my own, uh, mindscape-” Connie paused. Could she?! Something to check out later. “I don’t think I can look into my own head, but if I did I think I’d see something similar. I’m not confident like Steven, or maybe I’m confident in a different way. I don’t really get people like he does and I worry what they think. Half the time that I’m talking to someone, I’m worried I’m saying something stupid.”

Lars didn’t interrupt but his mouth became a line.

“Or, I used to. I’m better about it these days. I used to have to psyche myself up just to go into the Big Donut and buy snacks from you and Sadie,” said Connie, thinking back. “A lot of things helped --facing down a giant nightmare monster really made me recalibrate my sense of what’s scary, for example-- but I think having Steven helped me the most.”

“I don’t want a Steven,” said Lars, mouthing the words as though they left a bad taste on his tongue.

Connie shook her head. “No, but you could use a Steven. Someone who can figure out the things about yourself that you’re not able to. Someone who can make you see the good, and help you overcome the bad. It’d make you a better person.” She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling cold despite the evening warmth. “Or help you not become a worse one.”

Lars started to open his mouth but was silenced by a gesture from Connie.

“Telling off Sadie’s mom, hanging out with the Cool Kids, going out on a date: those were all good things, right? Things you wanted to do?” she asked.

Lars looked like he was considering saying something acerbic but caught himself. Head hanging a little lower he said, “Yeah.” A beat later he added, touchily, “So?”

“So, you could have that without quitting your job and freaking out your parents. You could have that without all the other stuff you did when you didn’t have that tether on your bad behavior.” The wind blew a gull feather onto Connie’s shorts. She brushed it away where it was picked up by the ocean breeze and carried off into the distance. “You just have to get better at being you.”

Lars rolled his eyes. “Tell Steven he can find some other charity case to bother.”

Connie shook her head. “Oh, you can’t have Steven.” She crossed her arms and looked Lars in the eyes. “I’ve got dibs. Get your own.”

Lars looked at her, a mix of emotions on his narrow face.

Connie rose to her feet and gestured, pointing at something over the side of the building.

With a sigh, Lars stood up as well and looked down, Sadie visible below as she spoke with someone, presumably Steven, obscured by the line of the roof.

“You can’t have Steven but I know someone else who wants the job.”

Sadie looked up at them, smiled, and waved. Hesitantly, Lars waved back.

“Do you want to take the force fields down, or…” asked Connie, already willing a pair into being below.

Lars shook his head. “I’ll use the hatch.”

“Think about it,” Connie said, then scooted over to the edge of her ad hoc slide. Spying her, Steven gave a cheer and jogged over to receive her at the bottom. Connie smiled and pushed off, sliding down to her waiting friend below.

_I will be,_ she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	5. Seeing What's In Front Of You

Steven waved goodbye to Sadie and Lars as the pair rounded a corner and vanished from sight. Sadie had offered to walk Lars home and he’d taken her up on it and Steven was really happy about that because it would probably make Lars happier and it would definitely make Sadie happier.

A corner of Steven’s mind was already thinking of the color scheme for the wedding.

He turned around and for a split second her thought he could see through Connie, the light of the setting sun shining through her instead of on her. He rubbed his eyes and saw her standing there like normal, arms wrapped around herself, looking like she was having deep Connie thoughts, and not particularly happy ones.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Connie looked at him and gave him a smile while she shook her head. She laughed a little. “No? Yes? I really don’t know.”

Steven played with his hair while pondering this. Maybe doing something would help her feel less like she was drowning in destiny. He smiled back. “If you want, we can go get the power diary and write some things down while we get something to eat. Jenny was telling me about this cool new pizza idea she was thinking of for a cooking competition she was going to and…”

He trailed off when his friend shook her head.

“I need to go and think about something first. Alone.” She gave him an apologetic look. Then, in a hurry, she said “But I promise I’ll meet you in a couple of hours.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, nodding but feeling like he wasn’t getting something. “I’ll see you later then.” He stepped forward to give her a goodbye hug and she retreated half a step.

For a single, desperate moment he wanted to try and play it off as though he had meant to do something else --Tie his shoe? Pick something up? Go for a jog?-- but he couldn’t think of anything and just stood there feeling lost.

“Um, bye,” he said lamely and started to walk backwards away.

Connie was looking awkward as well. After Steven had gotten a couple of steps away, she waved and said, “Bye! Thank you for all your help, Steven! You were really, really great today!”

He smiled, felt a blush starting, and waved back. “Ah, you’re welcome! Later Connie!” Then he turned and started to jog down the road, eager to get out of sight so his stomach might stop doing so many flippy flops in front of Connie.

* * *

It was kinda late but Steven had hurried out after he got the message from Connie. He met her outside her dad’s apartment, hopping off his bike and giving her a warm smile. It helped cover for the butterflies in his tummy, because Connie was looking part serious and part nervous and he had _no_ idea what to make of that.

They walked down Thayer without saying much, just a little chit chat about their dinners. Steven had a story about clipping Lion’s nails, a story and a tiny scratch on one finger. Connie made a lion tamer joke that he laughed at but after that things fell back into walking without much talking.

Once they reached the beach, Connie took a deep breath. They started to drift in the direction of the Beach House and Steven kind of wondered if Connie was distracted.

“Funland Arcade token for your thoughts?” he offered, fishing the token out of his pocket, moonlight reflecting off its shiny surface.

Connie gave a weak chuckle which turned into more of a groan. She reached out and gently curled Steven’s fingers around the token in his palm. “If that’s the case, I should be giving you tokens.”

Steven didn’t say anything, but he looked at his best friend, inviting her to share her mind.

They were slow-walking toward the Beach House again when Connie said, “So… um… When we were in Sadie’s room I kinda, accidentally…” then she muttered something too low for Steven to hear.

He resisted the urge to fiddle with his hearing aids and said, “You what?”

“I’M-SUPER-SORRY-BUT-I-LOOKED-AT-YOUR-MIND-AND-I-DIDN’T-MEAN-TO-BUT-I-DID-AND-I’M-SORRY-AAAH!”

Steven’s eyebrows tried to climb up his head like Lion did when Dad was running the vacuum cleaner nearby. He blinked, finally saying, “...You read my mind?”

“Kiiind of?” Connie looked like Steven did whenever Mom caught him snooping around for his birthday presents.

Then the implications of what she said started to sink in. “How much of it?” he asked quietly.

The butterflies in his tummy were having a rave.

“Well, it’s all kind of metaphorical. I don’t see literal thoughts or anything-”

“OH THANK GOODNESS!” The words just tumbled out of him and he quickly clapped his hands over his mouth after. He gave her an apologetic look and nodded for her to continue.

“Again, it’s all metaphorical what my power shows me, but what I saw when I looked was…” She glanced at him sheepishly. “...Was the mind-metaphor-equivalent of a giant statue of me with rose petals and chocolates.”

Steven felt a flush start at his cheeks and race across his face. If Connie told him his ears were on fire, he’d believe her. “Oh geez…”

They walked in silence for a few more steps before Connie spoke. Her voice started off slow and gentle but became faster and more rambly as she went. “Yeah. Again, I’m sorry about that. It was an accident at first, and I wasn’t a hundred percent certain it was your mind I was looking at. I mean, I really hoped it was, because Sadie was there too, but then after Lars and Sadie left I checked again when it was just you there and then I was certain and did-I-mention-I-was-sorry-because-I’M-REALLY-SORRY!”

_Did she say she really hoped it was me?_

Steven, face still aflame, reached out and took Connie’s hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. A few steps later and he asked, “... So… Are there any statues of… people in your mind?” His voice lilted up into a question and his face rose just enough to see her expression in his peripheral vision.

Connie frowned. Then gave him a wan smile. Then wrung her hands. Then couldn’t seem to find a spot for her hands and thrust them into the pockets of her shorts instead. “I can’t look at my own mind. Or I don’t think so. It was one of the things I tried. I even got in front of a mirror and tried really, really hard because…” Her voice trailed off.

They walked in silence over the sand, the moon reflecting off the ocean and lighting their way.

“Do you think there might be one?” Steven pressed.

The butterflies in his tummy were wearing jetpacks now.

Connie’s head ducked lower, her cheek flushed as she studied the sand. “...M-Maybe…”

They were at the base of the Beach House now, which was good, because his legs were mostly jelly at this point. He flopped onto the bottom step and heaved a sigh. “I’m kind of glad you saw that. Normally I’m pretty good with feelings, but every time I tried to think of what to say for that my tongue would forget how words worked.”

Connie sat down on the step beside him. There was a long silence and for some reason his body was finding the silences scarier than the words. It was like when he’d had to watch that scary movie while hiding in Sadie’s room. Only it was a different kind of scary.

“Steven?”

He swallowed. “Yeah?”

“I like you too.” Her hand inched closer to his and timidly brushed against his fingers.

“I, um-” It was such a shame that Steven was going to spontaneously combust, now of all times, but there was no other explanation for the heat he was feeling. “So what should we… do?”

Connie pursed her lips in thought. “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. Like… have a boyfriend, I mean.”

Steven felt a hot chill sweep through his body at the word. “You mean, I’m a boyfriend now?”

Connie looked taken aback. “Well, I mean, only if you want to-”

“No. No! I want to. Believe me, I want to.” He could hear his heart thumping in his ears loud enough he was worried he’d just shouted. “I just never heard that before… Can you say it again?”

Connie looked up at him, a playful smile on her face. She had a pretty smile. She had a pretty everything. “Boyfriend?” she said.

Steven felt that thrill shoot through him again. “Oh, wow, that’s pretty awesome.”

Connie chuckled. It was, in Steven’s firm opinion, the best chuckle ever in the whole wide world. She smiled at him and arched an eyebrow. “What about me?”

“Huh? Oh! That means that you’re my-” He was pretty sure even miss Jasper couldn’t have overpowered his smile muscles in this moment. “-My girlfriend.”

They both gave a little shiver at that, beaming at one another. Somehow Connie’s hand had found his hand and she was looking into his eyes and he was looking into hers and her face was getting closer somehow and he thought maybe she was going to touch her forehead to his like they’d done up on Lighthouse Park that one time only then someone angled their head so it wasn’t their foreheads that was going to touch but rather their-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Connie is a perceptive girl but some things are harder for her to notice than others. But when it's right in front of her, clear as day...
> 
> The art for this chapter was drawn by the completely, utterly, and incontrovertibly awesome [Anawinkaro](https://anawinkaro.tumblr.com/tagged/anawinkaro.drawings), a Connverse laureate of the highest order. I could think of no more appropriate artist to depict this scene and I am thrilled and grateful for the outstanding job they did. You can find more of Anawinkaro's art on their Tumblr [here](https://anawinkaro.tumblr.com/) and their Deviant Art page [here](https://anawinkaro.deviantart.com/).
> 
> With the end of Ep29 we come to the end of Connie Swap for 2018. We are now going on break for the rest of the year, recharging our batteries and not trying to juggle weekly Connie Swap content alongside major family-holiday-travel madness. I, br42, am reserving the right to _actually_ take some Wednesdays off rather than create omake content... though I make no promises one way or another.
> 
> But in January you can look forward to **Episode 30: Colored Perception.**
>
>>   
> Connie's newest power has huge implications, so much so that she'll need her Destiny Partner to help her contemplate and investigate them. Bismuth, meanwhile, is attempting to help Peridot out of her funk, an activity the Beach House may not survive intact.
> 
> Edit: Also, BINGO!  
>   
> Thanks to [BinaryGeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BinaryGeek/pseuds/BinaryGeek) for the updated Bingo sheet... and making the original in conjunction with Connie Swap Discord speculation.
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Keeping track of all the updates to Connie Swap can get a little difficult, can't it? It doesn't have to be! If you go to the [Connie Swap Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/630527) page and click the " **Subscribe** " button then you will receive an email alert every time a new episode is posted or a new chapter is added to _ANY_ fic in Connie Swap.
> 
> One button. All the updates.


End file.
